Principle 4: Build an energizing environment

Curious how we arrived at our four Strategic Principles? Check out this post.

When we think of the reasons we love living in this city, we always come back to its vibrancy.

It’s alive. The activity and energy of our city offer infinite opportunities to learn, play, and interact. While people are connecting all over Boston, we often leave people feeling detached from City Hall and our website doesn't help. Strategic Principle number four is all about reconnecting them. About making people feel like City Hall is not only an important part of their world, but a useful — and even delightful — part of their world.

The site should never be a barrier to you getting on with your life. It should be a way of propelling you through it. Dead ends and out-dated information currently leave visitors to the site thinking “Clearly this isn’t the place I get something done.” The site looks dormant and that causes people to seek out life — abort their mission and call a phone number, when what they really wanted was to take action independently.

Our City's website should be as alive and energetic as the people it serves. It should inspire you to engage and be a digital means of connecting you to the people and activities that make Boston such an amazing place to live and work. To bring it to life, we’ll be highlighting stories about City government that you haven’t heard before. We’re looking at new ways to surface opportunities to take action, whether that’s attending a local meeting or finding events. And we’ll be providing many more opportunities and methods for your voices to be heard.

Strategic Principle number four reminds us that life is meant to be lived. And the site should embody that spirit. That doesn’t mean that it needs to look like an invitation to a block party. But it shouldn’t look like a tax form either. Not if we truly want people to engage with the City they call home.

And we most definitely do.